This study attempts to develop a vocabulary level test and examine the relationship between EFL learners' vocabulary size and their reading comprehension skills. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) a carefully designed vocabulary test based on the word frequency can determine which vocabulary level learners belong to with ample reliability and validity, (2) learners vocabulary levels are significantly correlated with their reading comprehension skills, and (3) there is a minimal vocabulary size (threshold) which is necessary for learners to make successful reading comprehension. Two tests, a vocabulary level test and a reading comprehension test, were administered to 260 twelfth students. The vocabulary test consists of four sections with eighteen multiple-choice questions, i.e., 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 and University Word List (UWL) levels so that it can classify learners into five vocabulary levels. The original version was invented by Nation(1990) as Vocabulary Levels Test. He selected proper words in terms of their frequency, based on three authorized word lists: A General Service List of English (GSL) by West(1953), The Teachers' Word Book of 30,000 Words by Thorndike and Lorge (1944), A Computational Analysis of Present-day American English by and Kucera and Francis (1967). The original test contains 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 and UWL word level sections, but not 4,000 level section. The 4,000 level section was originally developed for this experiment under Prof. Nation's instruction by the present writer, on the basis of the three authorized word lists mentioned above. The reading comprehension test, consisting of 20 questions divided into multiple-choice, explanation, summarization and so forth, aims to gauge how much readers have understood the text. The results show that the first hypothesis and the second one were supported, but not the third This means that the vocabulary test developed for this study worked well in classifying the learners in terms of their vocabulary levels. The significantly high correlation (r=.84, p<.0001) between vocabulary levels and reading comprehension skills implies that about 70% of reading comprehension skills can be explained by readers' vocabulary levels.

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Phrase reading, or chunking, has proved to be one of the most effective techniques to improve the reading skills of learners of English as a second or foreign language. Some studies indicate that phrase reading is effective for all levels of learners, while others indicate that it is effective only for good readers. Still others show that only poor readers improve their reading ability by that method. However, most of the studies conducted so far have investigated the effect in terms of general reading ability or general English ability. That is, they explore the relationship between the learner's proficiency levels arid the effect of phrase reading. The present research investigates the relationship between the vocabulary size of the learner, which is considered to be one of the factors that construct reading ability, and the effect of phrase reading. The data shows that in a group of learners whose vocabulary size is small, the subjects who read a passage with slashes obtain higher scores than those who read it without slashes. However, in the group of learners who possess a large vocabulary, the result is the opposite: the subjects who read a passage without slashes gain higher scores.

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This paper attempts to show teacher correction can and should play a greater role in elevating learners' writing quality than has been implied by previous studies in this field. It was hypothesized that (1) teacher corrections could be made more effective by follow-up instructions from the teacher, and (2) teacher correction often does not discourage learners. Forty EFL Japanese students (ages 15-16) wrote a summary of a narrative, which was edited and corrected by the teacher. The students were then divided into two homogenious groups of twenty based on the quality of the first draft. After the corrected drafts were returned, one group was instructed to submit second drafts incorporating all the corrections, while the other group received no further instructions. One week later, both groups were made to write a summary of the same narrative again without prior notice. Also a questionnaire survey was conducted to examine the learners' attitude toward having their writings corrected by the teacher. The results supported both hypotheses above. Implications for the classroom are discussed in detail.

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The purpose of this study is to find out the expectations and anxieties of public junior high students during Team-Teaching conducted by two Japanese teachers of English and to help to improve the method of Team-Teaching. We implement Team-Teaching of English for all of the 7th grade junior high students twice a week. Our organizational pattern is based upon the Associate Type (Bailey, K. M. et al. 1992, 163-164) where leadership emerges as a result of interactions among the members of the team in a given situation, and decision-making power may be shared equally. The results of the study revealed that the expectations of the students were (1) to improve their skills of speaking and listening and (2) to desire the teachers' immediate recognition and help when they encountered difficulty during the class. Their anxieties are as follows. First, the students feel that the teachers are more likely to fire questions at them when two teachers come to the class. Students often feel nervous when they are asked in front of the class and the possibility of having to answer more questions causes anxiety in the students. Second, the students often become confused because they received different directions from two different teachers at one time. We teachers should reflect on our procedure during the class. We need to have more time to make previous arrangements before the class. The study also revealed that girls want to receive more Team-Teaching lessons than prior to the study and boys want to receive less Team-Teaching lessons.

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The purpose of this study is to replicate the study of American and Japanese performance on face-threatening acts conducted by Beebe and Takahashi (1989) and to examine and evaluate the results and methodologies of both studies. This study focuses on "disagreement situation" and "embarrassing information". The discourse completion test (DCT) used in the original study was used in this study. The subjects were 4 Japanese ESL learners who responded in English, 4 native speakers of Japanese who responded in Japanese, and 4 native speakers of English who responded in English. Although this study was done in a small scale, it adopted interviewing each subject after s/he finished filling out each item of DCTs. The responses were analyzed according to semantic formulas and examined in interview report. This replication study confirms the conclusion of the original study that Americans are not so direct as we expect and that Japanese speakers can be very straight forward depending on the situation. The interviews shed light on possible reasons for the bluntness of Japanese speakers. This study suggests the importance of examining the subjects' utterances from a linguistic point of view, since both American and Japanese speakers adopted sociolinguistically different strategy of performing politeness.

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